FACES
450 x 300 cm
As an artist that works exclusively with abstract forms, Nikola seems to be a lone wolf in the street art scene of Belgrade. As an artistic expression that broke from graffiti and the dominance of letters, street art has established itself as predominantly narrative and figurative. And yet, there are those, like Nikola, who take it to another level and relieve themselves of everything except the philosophy of art that manifests itself as the sublimation of thought: pure abstraction. But that abstraction has roots in previous research during which he was experimenting with pure lines, no colour, and where he was finding form in the abstract. The piece that we can see here is one of the best examples of that early stage. And if we want to go further into the past, we can claim that this phase started with one of his early street art interventions where he used to sign as Alone and draw a simple creepy face. But what is less known is that, at the time he chose to do that creepy face that looked as if it was made by an unskilled beginner, Nikola was doing hyper-realistic panoramas on paper. Therefore, it is very hard to know exactly what we are seeing when we see his artwork on the streets. We can argue that they actually make us do what street art is supposed to do – make us think.